Syrian Acting Ambassador at the United Nations Dr. Mounzer Mounzer exposes the lies and fabrications mentioned in a report written by the The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and presented by Stephen O’Brien, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs. Using humanitarian suffering to justify illegal intervention is what these reports are about.

The statement was read in Arabic by Dr. Mounzer and we’ve attached the English subtitles to it in the following video clip, full transcript below:

Statement full transcript:

I hope that you, Mr. President, will be patient and listen to our comments on the briefing by the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs.

The Government of my country has considered the thirty-ninth monthly report of the Secretary-General (S/2017/445). It expresses its concern and regret over the approach of the report’s authors, which in many aspects reflect the positions of certain States, parties and Governments that deliberately distort reality and deny the basic causes for the situation and humanitarian crisis in Syria, and the emergence and spread of armed terrorist groups with the support, financing and guidance of known Governments.

These Governments — some of which, unfortunately, are permanent members of the Security Council — impose unilateral economic measures against the Syrian people in order to bring pressure to bear on the people by denying them various basic resources necessary for a decent life. In this regard, I note that this morning the Government of my country has addressed two identical letters to the Secretary General and the President of the Security Council containing its detailed response to the report.

The Government of my country finds it strange that the authors of the report, who should focus on humanitarian issues, continue to include issues that have nothing to do with humanitarian affairs and do not reflect the reality on the ground. Allow me to share some key observations of the Syrian Government on some of this erroneous information.

The authors of the report insist on sending political messages adopted by the Governments of certain countries. They accuse the Syrian Government of laying siege to areas of Syria. The entire Syrian people is under siege and exhausted on both the living humanitarian levels, due to the unilateral economic measures imposed by the Governments of certain Member States — led by the United States and the European Union — that shed crocodile tears and bemoan the situation of the Syrian people As for the areas that the United Nations has classified as under siege, the Organization is operating under erroneous information. Rather, armed terrorist groups that lay siege to those areas use civilians as human shields and deny them the humanitarian aid they are sent.

Those groups sell humanitarian provisions at exorbitant prices — in Aleppo, for example. The report uses the term “forced displacement” to describe national reconciliation measures being implemented in large swaths of Syria — a dangerous posture that reflects the positions of Governments that continue to insist on covering for and protecting armed terrorist groups in Syria. Those national reconciliation measures have restored security, stability and normalcy to many Syrian towns and cities.

In that regard, we stress that the reconciliation efforts are transparent operations through which the Government offers armed groups the option to lay down their weapons and regularize their status without any legal charges brought against them or they can relocate to another area. That does not apply to civilians, of course, who can go back to their daily lives after the armed groups leave. We do not yet know why some senior officials of the Secretariat feel concerned about Syrians regaining their homes, security and normal lives.

My Government regrets that the authors of the report have adopted, fully and in a biased way, the American version regarding the use of chemical weapons in Khan Shaykhun. The Government of the Syrian Arab Republic has repeatedly made clear its principled position rejecting the use of chemical weapons or toxic chemicals, which is considered to be a crime against humanity and an immoral, heinous act that cannot be justified in any circumstance for any reason or anywhere. We reiterate that we have not used chemical materials in our war against terrorism. The incident in Khan Shaykhun was contrived by terrorist groups, led by the Al-Nusrah Front, with the guidance and support of the Governments of some States, in order for Syria to take the blame for the use of such weapons.

The authors of the report insist on remaining silent on the catastrophic consequences of the illegal air strikes carried out by the self-styled international coalition. Those strikes have targeted infrastructure such as dams, bridges, hospitals, schools and oil facilities. Moreover, it is well known in the Council and to world public opinion, that such arbitrary strikes in northern and eastern Syria have claimed dozens of innocent civilian victims. We also regret that the Secretariat continuously promotes the actions of that coalition and deliberately turns a blind eye to the illegal nature of the coalition and the fact that it is violating international law and the Charter of the United Nations.

The coalition was not created at the request of the Syrian Government or pursuant to a Security Council resolution.

The authors of the report continuously try to justify the aggression of the Turkish military regime — which backs some armed terrorist groups in Syria — against the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic. It is therefore quite odd that the report states that Turkey’s closing of the Nusaybin/Qamishli border crossing is but temporary and for security reasons, whereas in fact the closure began in December 2015 and only seeks to increase the suffering of the population of the Hasakah governorate.

The Government of Syria has to date provided its people with around 75 per cent of its humanitarian needs. We reaffirm our steadfast policy to ensure the provision of humanitarian aid and to meet the needs of Syrian citizens everywhere, without any discrimination. Thus, we have welcomed the proposal put forward by the United Nations and the Government of Japan to facilitate regular monthly humanitarian convoys.

I would also like to make certain observations on the humanitarian situation:

First of all, my Government again stresses the obligation of the United Nations to coordinate with it, in a spirit of partnership and cooperation, all aspects of the humanitarian efforts with Syria. We must not submit to the political agendas of certain Member States or to the demands and allegations of other actors, which the authors of the report erroneously identify as “local authorities”.

Secondly, the authors of the report must hold the Al-Nusrah Front terrorist group and its allied armed terrorist groups responsible for blocking humanitarian aid because those groups target peaceful residential areas, block vital roads, besiege several locations and use civilians as human shields.

Thirdly, the Syrian Government rejects the allegations and accusations levelled against it by the authors of the report concerning procedural and logistical measures concerning the delivery of humanitarian aid to unstable zones. We reaffirm that we comply with all agreements on the provision of aid, including medical supplies, to civilians in need.

Moreover, we want to ensure accuracy in determining the number of people who receive that aid, and that the supplies do not end up in terrorist hands. Additionally, the Syrian Government has facilitated the delivery of more than 15 humanitarian convoys in April and May, in keeping with the monthly humanitarian convey agreement. We will continue to make efforts to ensure that more convoys can reach those zones.

Fourthly, the authors of the report do not address the failures of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Syria, which deliberately delays the operations of the convoys, allows the delivery of aid to some zones on a monthly basis to the exclusion of others, and refuses humanitarian access to zones requested by the Syrian Government.

Moreover, the Office does not provide accurate numbers of the convoys that are being organized every month in order to underplay the role and efforts of the Syrian Government. Additionally, the Office and the authors of the report purposefully avoid mentioning the joint International Committee of the Red Cross-Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoys, and they include neither the actual numbers of convoys being organized based on prior approvals, nor the number of people benefiting from them.

Fifthly, the authors of the report cite the tragedy of civilians who fled Foah and Kafraya in a narrative way that it is far from describing the scale of that crime, despite the fact that the terrorist bombing of their buses in the Rashidin area in Aleppo city on 15 April claimed the lives of dozens of women and children and destroyed dozens of ambulances and buses that could not be replaced due to the economic siege imposed by Governments of certain Member States upon Syria.

Sixthly, the report continues to promote cross-border aid, most of which falls into the hands of the terrorist groups that are rampant in the areas, where such aid arrives.

The people of Syria continue to be the victims of the lies and hypocrisy within the Security Council espoused by the same group of States that do not wish to see an end to the crisis in Syria but want to continue to manage and invest in terrorism and in armed terrorist groups and impose an economic blockade on the Syrian people.

I now address my comments to the representative of the United States, who claimed earlier today that she was speaking on behalf of a Syrian refugee in Turkey. We speak here on behalf of millions of Syrians inside and outside Syria, who call on the Governments of France, the United States and the United Kingdom and on the Governments of regimes that support terrorism in Syria to stop exploiting the Syrian crisis to achieve their political schemes at the expense of the Syrians’ interests.

I call on them to lift the economic blockade on the Syrian people and to end air strikes on cities, the destruction of infrastructure and the targeting of civilians under the pretext of combating Da’esh, and to stop making up fictitious stories that are similar to cheap Hollywood movies.

I remind the United States representative and her colleague from France that the media in their two countries have questioned the fabricated evidence provided by the two countries on about the situation in Sednaya and Khan Shaykhun, yet no one has questioned the fact that the aircraft of the so-called international coalition kill hundreds of innocent civilians in Syria and Iraq.

Finally, my country, Syria, will continue to play a constructive role to ensure that the Astana and Geneva meetings are successful, in the context of its involvement in any genuine effort to put an end to the blood bath in Syria and to terrorism, and that will help us to find a political solution, on the basis of intra-Syrian dialogue, led by the Syrian people, without foreign interference or preconditions.